Art

Capturing the Civil Rights movement: This week’s visual arts highlights

McGibbon O’Lynn, Niamh McCann, Francis Matthews and Helen Cammock on show

People’s Democracy March, Belfast 1968 © courtesy trustees of the estate of Buzz Logan/Linen Hall Library, Gallery of Photography

Aidan Dunne's face
Aidan Dunne
Sat Oct 6 2018 - 05:00

Xenophon: Ubi Tunc Vox Inauditae Melodiae? Et Vox Inauditae Linguae? – McGibbon O’Lynn

The Gallery, Triskel Arts Centre, Tobin St, Cork Until November 25th triskelartscentre.ie

The latest instalment of visual artist Siobhan McGibbon and writer Maeve O'Lynn's collaborative Xenophon project speculating on a post-human world takes its cue from 12th-century Catholic mystic, composer and polymath Hildegard von Bingen, who developed one of the first invented languages, Lingua Ignota, "for purposes unknown".

Furtive Tears – Niamh McCann

Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane, Charlemont House, Parnell Sq N, Dublin Until January 6th hughlane.ie

For her new installation, Niamh McCann engineers the unlikely meeting of two historical protagonists, the Unionist politician Edward Carson and the early 20th-century German architect and set designer Hans Poelzig, known for his monumental design projects. Buildings and their interiors: what they are meant to say and how people read them.

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Francis Matthews – New paintings

The Molesworth Gallery, 16 Molesworth St, Dublin Until October 31st molesworthgallery.com

Matthews is known for his cool, precise, atmospheric paintings of Dublin city’s streets by night – late into the night, when people have dispersed and electric light bounces off empty paths and roads. It’s as though the viewer is alone in the city, finding a way home at the end of a long evening.

The Lost Moment – Civil Rights, Street Protest and Resistance in Northern Ireland, 1968-69

[ galleryofphotography.ie ]

Following its showing in Derry-Londonderry, writer-curator Sean O’Hagan’s wide-ranging photographic exhibition locates the Civil Rights movement in Northern Ireland 50 years ago (see also the Long Note) in the context of international protests at the time. The brutally repressive response, he suggests, stymied a golden opportunity for social and political progress and catalysed the violence and misery of the Troubles.

The Long Note – Helen Cammock

Void, Patrick St, Derry-Londonderry Until December 15th derryvoid.com

In her multi-disciplinary works, Max Mara prize-winner Helen Cammock is "Thinking about Who represents Whom and for Whom". She aims to amplify marginalised and forgotten voices. Her new film, The Long Note, reconsiders the levels and kinds of involvement by women in the Civil Rights movement in Derry and reflects the complexity of the historical layering and divisions in the city. A previous film, Shouting in Whispers, is also on view.